


A Study in Carbuncle

by okapi



Series: Many Times, Many Ways (the Christmas fics) [17]
Category: A Study in Emerald - Neil Gaiman
Genre: Advent Calendar, Alternate Universe, Gen, Lovecraftian, Rache - Freeform, Story: The Adventure of the Blue Carbuncle, The Detective - Freeform, The Limping Doctor - Freeform, The Major - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-27
Updated: 2019-12-27
Packaged: 2021-02-26 00:00:26
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,500
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21984046
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/okapi/pseuds/okapi
Summary: Recovering a missing gem during the holiday season leads to more than a detective and his friend imagined."The Adventure of the Blue Carbuncle" set in "A Study in Emerald" AU (Victorian Lovecraftian)For the Watson Woes WAdvent Day 27 and for MissDavisWrites' Advent Calendar Day 17: wonder.
Relationships: Sebastian Moran & Jim Moriarty, Sherlock Holmes & John Watson
Series: Many Times, Many Ways (the Christmas fics) [17]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/361097
Comments: 25
Kudos: 17
Collections: 2019 Advent Ficlet Challenge, Watson's Woes WAdvent 2019





	A Study in Carbuncle

It is the precision, I believe. The immense world reduced to a small circle of vision. The reams of history distilled to the moment in which the tip of a quill weeps a tiny tear of wonder-ink upon a blank page, a point upon which later reams shall pivot.

But I am speaking of philosophy and of nonsense. Forgive me, I am not a literary man.

I am, however, a crack shot, and it was that skill and not any literary or poetic prowess that I was employing on the third day of Victoriana, the period in New Albion in which the comforting crimson moon is at its deepest, darkest shade of the year and all islanders celebrate the glory of our Queen’s ascendency seven hundred years ago.

I was in Camden House, which stands opposite my former quarters in Baker Street. I was looking through the scope of a powerful air-gun, an admirable and unique weapon which had been constructed to the order of a former friend, the man with whom until four days ago I had shared the Baker Street lodgings. The gun had been presented as a gift to me on the first day of the Victoriana season of the previous year.

I was expertly aiming the weapon at the head of my former friend, who was sitting by the window across the street. It was his shadow cast by the strong light burning behind a drawn blind.

I waited. I watched. I scarcely breathed.

I had been waiting and watching and scarcely breathing since dark, which is a long time for many, but not for me.

Then, suddenly, a second silhouette rose behind the seated one. The second figure’s arm was upraised and holding club ready to strike.

I struck first.

I squeezed the trigger.

Breaking glass.

The second shadow flailed and fell.

I felt the big-game hunter’s rush of satisfaction: the old shikari’s nerves had only _temporarily_ lost their steadiness!

Here I had my proof of what I had long hoped: I had once been a crack shot, and I was, once more, a crack shot.

I moved with silence, with stealth, and with haste. Too much haste, however, because I cut my palm on my gun case and, not wanting to waste a single moment, quickly fashioned a makeshift bandage with my handkerchief.

Why do you ask was I rushing to my former lodgings and to the side of my former friend?

Because the ‘former’ was pure theatre.

By careful arrangement, he and I had had a spectacular row, an argument loud enough to scatter the birds in nearby Regents Park, only four days earlier, and since then, I had taken a room in Queen Anne Street. Like all good performances, mine, at least, held a kernel of verisimilitude. Sometimes my friend did use me. Sometimes he did not trust me enough to confide the full truth of the circumstances in which I was helping him. Sometimes he took advantage of our friendship. Sometimes he was rude.

But only sometimes. Certainly not to the degree to drive me from our shared address.

It was a deliberate ploy to leave him defenseless. And, like most of my friend’s plans, it worked.

The fiend had struck. And I had struck back.

* * *

The body was on the rug. The wax bust of my friend was in the armchair by the window.

“Well done. You haven’t so much as grazed the fine work done for me by the sculptor Oscar Munier of Grenoble. I am pleased.” He looked down. “It is as I suspected: tonight, he wasn’t content to simply fiddle with the strong box.”

The body was that of a little rat-faced man called James Ryder, who worked as head attendant at the Hotel Cosmopolitan. At least, I believed it to be a man; however, in my experience, dead men do not usually ooze an odoriferous dark violet from their fatal bullet wounds.

The substance soaked into the rug, and I paused to consider the hike in rent to cover cleaning fees as well as the replacement for the window I’d shot.

“What is that smell?” I asked, covering my nose with my sleeve, a feeble attempt to shield myself from the stench.

“The blue carbuncle,” said my friend as he donned gloves, seemingly impervious to the foul miasma.

“Blue? But the stolen carbuncle, all carbuncles, in fact, are red.”

My friend carefully loosened the scarf about the man’s neck.

I gasped and coughed and tried not to retch.

Clusters of boils encircled the man’s neck; at least two were open and draining a putrid azure pus.

“You have been playing your part and keeping your distance and are, therefore, unaware of events except those reported, or allowed to be reported, by the press. This is what killed Catherine Cuscak, maid to the Countess of Morcar, as well as John Horner, the plumber who was charged with the theft of the Countess’ gem. The blue poison mixes with the red human blood and turns this fetching colour.”

My friend waved at the stain on the rug.

“That is different from what I read in the papers,” I said. I swallowed. “It is the ‘curse of the carbuncle.’ The three must have been conspirators. The maid passed the stone to Ryder and Ryder to Horner. Or some such way. They all touched the stone, and they all perished. Thank goodness you never touched that infernal rock.”

“Oh, but I did and, thus far, have suffered no ill effects.”

“What?! But the stone in the strong box is paste, a reproduction, mere bait.

“It _was_ a reproduction,” my friend grinned, “until today when I battled a goose for the real thing.”

“A goose?!” The fetid air was making me light-headed.

“You are right that there is a curse, but the curse of the carbuncle is on the Countess herself. She is of royal blood, albeit a much dilute and rather eccentric line. The curse is this: the longer she is separated from her ancestral stone, the less humane and human-like she becomes. These boils result from the touch of one of her limbs, and she now has many more limbs than when you and I visited her four days go.”

“She wrapped it ‘round his throat!”

“For your own wellbeing, I shan’t describe the corpses of Catherine Cuscak and John Horner. The police allowed the Countess to confront Horner directly. Unavoidable, I suppose, given her class and perhaps they didn’t anticipate the change in her. It did not save him, but Horner gave up the maid. The maid likewise gave up Ryder, who was attempting to retrieve the stone.”

“Did I kill an innocent man?”

“No. Ryder stole, and lost, the stone, and he was going to kill me to get it back. He would have died, regardless, from his affliction.” My friend made a gesture at his own neck. “I must send word to the Palace so that they can retrieve the body. And, of course, return the real stone to the Countess. Excuse me, just for a moment.” He ran downstairs.

While he was gone, I wondered, and as I wondered, aspects of the old argument surfaced, and my pique grew. My first words when he returned were accusations.

“And just when were you going to tell me that you had the stone? And that the stone wasn’t cursed?”

“Good fellow…”

Just then, I heard the zing of a bullet passing through the window I’d just shot out.

My friend and I instinctively fell to the floor.

“That man is not as crack a shot as you—Oh!”

For the first time in a long while, I saw an expression of genuine distress on my friend’s face. I followed his gaze to my own hand. My bandaged palm was flat in a wet pool, and my handkerchief was quickly turning a deep plum.

I cried out, looking back and forth, from my palm to the carbuncle on the dead man’s neck, in horrific wonder.

I got to my feet, tearing off the bandage and letting it drop on the floor.

All I wanted to do was put as much distance between myself and the bizarre scene as possible.

I careened down the stairs and out into the street.

A hearse carriage with royal insignia had stopped in front of the building, and four figures in half masks and dark laboratory coats, alit. Two went to the back of the carriage and were removing a stretcher.

“He’s up there,” my friend said quickly, then called to me, “Wait!”

He hurried after me.

“What have you done to me?” I snarled.

It was horribly unfair, and I knew it, but I was angry and afraid. The last words I heard him say were,

“I don’t know.”

I marched away at a swift clip, staring at my hand, which was now a deep mauve-colour. I hoped that I was imagining the hue; I hoped it was simply the Victoriana moonlight.

I walked. For how long, I do not know. An hour? Two?

I found myself in Queen Anne Street. I had washed my hand in snow several times, but when I burst into my rented room, I went directly to the wash basin.

Thus, I observed far, far too late the man waiting behind the door.

He was a small man who put his weight on his right foot. I knew who he was at once.

The limping doctor.

* * *

I was dreaming.

I was back in the worst theatre in Drury Lane, eating an orange and waiting for the show to begin.

The first play was a comedy about a silly young girl who accidentally steals a cat’s toy mouse thinking it is a perfumed sachet. The cat makes several attempts to retrieve its toy while the girl, still unaware, tucks the sachet into her wardrobe and her dress and even her bosom. At the end, she gives the toy mouse to her grandmother, who is delighted because she keeps a house full of cats.

Amidst the laughter and applause, I heard two disembodied voices.

_“Is he…?”_

_“No, we got to him in time, and the exposure was secondary and slight.”_

_“How long…?”_

_“Some hours. His friend is near?”_

_“Not as near as he thinks he is. I shall play fox to his hound.”_

_“Be careful.”_

_“Always.”_

The second play was a heart-breaking tale of star-crossed lovers. Again, it ended with applause and voices.

_“Good?”_

_“Good.”_

_“You are a wonder, Doctor.”_

_“So are you. This hefty dose of opium, and the Major will be ready to go home.”_

The third play dealt with a hunter obsessed with a certain man-eating tiger. The man, wonderfully like a tiger himself with savage eyes and bristling moustache, went to fantastic lengths to stalk his prey, even crawling down a drain. The tiger eluded the hunter until the latter tied a young goat under a tree and laid above it with his rifle ready, waiting for the bait to bring his quarry up, but at the very end, the hunter received the brush of dark fur on his cheek. He looked up to see the grinning tiger perched on the branch just above him, his tail flickering menacingly.

I woke in a strong embrace with a strained whisper in my ear.

“At last, I’ve found you! I’ve got you, and I shan’t let you go again!”

* * *

There was no trace of James Ryder in the sitting room of our Baker Street lodgings. The absence of the rug was the only clue as to what had happened. The pane in the window had already been replaced.

“The stone?” I asked when I had the wherewithal to ask anything.

My friend smiled. “Interestingly, we still have it. The Countess of Morcar lost utter control of herself and went on a bit of a spree, infecting a dozen or so including quite a few Palace workers who were very loyal to the Queen. Difficult to hush up that many blue carbuncle deaths, so, to prevent further embarrassment, the Countess was ordered by Her Majesty to take a sea voyage at once. For her health.”

“Oh.” The Countess of Morcar would not be returning to New Albion. Ever. “Are you going to keep the stone?”

“Yes, I have the sense that I might catch my tiger, the Resurrectionist Rache, using the stone as the tethered goat.”

I shivered, remembering the third part of my dream.

“Are you hungry, dear fellow?”

“Starved.”

“Touch the bell, then, and we will begin another investigation in which a bird will be the chief feature.”

“The goose that you fought for the stone?”

“Goodness, no. That flesh is undoubtedly too tough. A pair of tender woodcocks. My favourite.”

Later, I was cutting into the savoury meat when my knife struck something hard.

“The stone!” I exclaimed after a bit of dissection revealed a dark red gem.

My friend peered at it with wary interest. “If I may,” he said, then plucked the stone from my plate and held it aloft.

It fell to the table with a small plunk. My friend flew to his bedroom.

“Damn!”

He returned with his strong box in one hand and a letter in the other. His eyes flitted over the missive, then dance upon the wall behind me.

“That team of Palace undertakers! Somehow, he infiltrated them! Oh, he must have ice in his veins!”

He passed me the letter. “When you’ve read it, put it with the other one.”

I started. “How did you know I kept it?”

He tut-tutted. “Good fellow, don’t I know your methods by now?”

And with that, my friend plopped back down in his chair and resumed feasting with a renewed appetite.

_Dear Sir,_

_Long ago, at this time of year, there were held celebrations heralding of the triumph of light over darkness. The difference between you and I is that you believe that is still the case, that light has triumphed over darkness. Long ago, however, the darkness was the long winter nights, and they surrendered to the light of beckoning spring._

_Later, it was a season of forgiveness. I trust you will forgive me for helping myself to your bauble. While the carbuncle serves my aims admirably, it will do you absolutely no good. In return, I am delivering your friend restored to health. For that, you must thank my shrewd associate, who is as compassionate as he is ruthless. I would consider myself the better served by such an exchange were our roles reversed, and I know that you are overjoyed to have him back, safe and sound._

_I hope you enjoy your meal. I am a fowl fancier myself, but I must say I am glad it was you who had to do battle with that goose. There are somethings even my lot fear!_

_I wonder how we shall meet again._

_Rache._

I, too, wondered, even as I followed my friend’s lead and returned to my meal.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading!

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [The Emerald Falls](https://archiveofourown.org/works/26742142) by [KtwoNtwo](https://archiveofourown.org/users/KtwoNtwo/pseuds/KtwoNtwo)




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